Archive for the ‘Chronic Infections’ Category

Does histamine control your life? Are you even aware that it might? You might have MCAS!!

Much of this information comes from Dr Tania Dempsey and Dr Jill Carnahan in the States…. but it is a Syndrome worth thinking about if you’re simply not getting on top of your pain, allergies, nervous system stresses etc…. Many doctors in Australia are totally unaware of this condition.

What is Mast Cell Activation Syndrome?

Mast cells, a type of blood cell, play an important role in the body’s immune system. They reside in all body tissues and form part of the body’s initial defence system. Mast cells react to foreign bodies and injury by releasing a variety of potent chemical mediators, such as histamine, when activated. In a healthy person these chemicals will act beneficially to protect and heal the body, but in a person with MCAS these same chemicals are inappropriately triggered and released and have a negative effect on the body. Amongst the triggers are a variety of different foods, exercise, chemicals, fragrances and stress. Many sufferers struggle to identify their triggers and continue to discover new triggers for many years after diagnosis.

MCAS forms part of a spectrum of mast cell disorders involving proliferation and/or excessive sensitivity of mast cells, it has been identified since 2007. It features inappropriate mast cell activation with little or no increase in the number of mast cells, unlike in Mastocytosis*. MCAS causes a wide range of unpleasant, sometimes debilitating, symptoms in any of the different systems of the body, frequently affecting several systems at the same time. The onset of MCAS is often sudden, affecting both children and adults, sometimes in family groups, mimicking many other conditions and presenting a wide-range of different symptoms that can be baffling for both the patient and their physician. Often there are no obvious clinical signs since MCAS confounds the anatomy-based structure underpinning the traditional diagnostic approach. Very often Mast Cell Activation Syndrome is hiding in plain sight.

Mastocystosis: very rare and NOT what we’re talking about here…

Mastocytosis involves inappropriate mast cell activation AS WELL AS an increased number of mast cells. It is a rare but relatively well known mast cell disorder and is currently easier to diagnose than MCAS.

Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS): When Histamine Goes Haywire…

Mast cells are present in most tissues throughout the human body, especially connective tissue, skin, intestinal lining cardiovascular system, nervous system, and reproductive organs. They are part of the allergic response designed to protect us from threat and injury. When the body is exposed to a perceived threat, the mast cells secrete chemical mediators, such as histamine, interleukins, prostaglandins, cytokines, chemokine and various other chemicals stored in the cytoplasm of the cell. These chemical messengers produce both local and systemic effects, such as increased permeability of blood vessels (inflammation and swelling), contraction of smooth muscle (stomach cramps and heart palpitations), and increase mucous production (congestion, sneezing, etc). Historically, we thought of mast cells only in relation to an allergic or anaphylactic response. We now know they play a profound role in immune activation, development of autoimmunity and many other disorders, such as POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome). Sadly we are seeing a large increase in patients presenting with mast cell disorders and MCAS. I believe it is in part do to the onslaught of more pervasive environmental toxins, moulds and chemicals.

Withouts mast cells, we would not be able to heal from a wound. They protect us from injury and help the body to heal. Unfortunately, overactive mast cells can cause a variety of serious symptoms.

Infertility (mast cells in endometrium may contribute to endometriosis)

Interstitial Cystitis

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

Migraine Headaches

Mood disorders – anxiety, depression, and insomnia

Multiple Chemical Sensitivities

POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome)

Mast cells are known to be the primary responders in allergic reactions, orchestrating strong responses to minute amounts of allergens. Several recent observations indicate that they may also have a key role in coordinating the early phases of autoimmune diseases, particularly those involving auto-antibodies.

Lab Tests for Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) – many of these are as yet unavailable in Australia … Possibly histamine is as yet the only available, but chat to Georgia about what our Naturopathic Labs can offer….

Tryptase is the most famous mast cell mediator. Serum tryptase value is usually normal in MCAS patients, but sometimes it is elevated. Tryptase values that show an increase of 20% + 2 ng/ml above the baseline level are considered diagnostic for MCAS.

Chromogranin A is a heat-stable mast cell mediator. High levels can suggest MCAS, but other sources must first be ruled out, such as heart failure, renal insufficiency, neuroendocrine tumors and proton pump inhibitor (PPI) use.

Heparin is a very sensitive and specific marker of mast cell activation. However, due to its quick metabolism in the body, it is very difficult to measure reliably.

N-methylhistamine is usually measured in a 24 hour urine test to account for the variability in release over the course of the day.

Prostaglandin D2 is produced by several other cell types, but mast cell release is responsible for the dominant amount found in the body. PGD2 is less stable than histamine and metabolized completely in 30 minutes.

Good morning! Challenges with maintaining our weight throughout life are going to be constant and inevitable. Sugar is constantly in the news lately – yes, manufacturers of our food deliberately add the exact amount which makes us addicted! No wonder it’s so challenging.

Diabetes in Australia is increasing at such a rapid rate that it’s estimated that 50% of us will have dementia by the age of 50within 25years – and diabetes is a major cause. This is ridiculous! We’ve modified our food, DNA and genes so much these days our cells become primed to develop chronic illness such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease so much earlier in our bodies than even 30 years ago.

May favourite 3 products for sugar cravings are:

1. Bactrex and Ultra Flora SB Dysbiosis – for underlying candida, fungus, bacterial infections that make us want to eat sweets (they love a sweet, acidic environment!) 3-6 daily depending on the severity and combination of the infections.

2. Gymnema tablets – known as ‘the sugar killer’ in Indian – it’s a herb which over a period of time makes our tongue need less sweet. Long-term (2 year) studies have shown pancreatic cells regnerating with gymnema use. 4-6 daily when sugar cravings are bad.

Ew!! Let’s talk yucky mucus! This is a fungal ball – the result of anti-bitoics which allow fungus to grow, and then the body releases mucus to sop up the fungus. Yuck!Research is showing that biofilm (a mucus substance that is released to ‘sop up’ bacterial, fungal and viral particles) in the average person – with a normal history of vaccines and anti-biotic use, is holding up to 20 chronic infections in our bodies. Why?

Anti-biotic use: one dose of anti-biotics can destroy our gut lining, and our bacterial, viral and fungal combination in our gut for up to 7 years IF we haven’t done anything to repair the dose. Because anti-biotics upset our gut lining, our body makes biofilm to help to soothe it, often containing the bug-particles that we’ve been killing off. Anti-biotics are anti-bacterial – but they may allow candida, fungus, viruses or cancer cells to get out of hand…

Pain killers – yep! Any medical pain killers are anti-inflammatory by nature (makes sense!) but did you know that the process of killing bad bacteria or viruses or fungus or candida or cancer cells is indeed inflammatory? In other words, the more pain killers we take, the more chronic infections we can have lurking in our systems. If you take pain-killers you must be on probiotics to balance your body

Vaccines – the ‘adjuvants’ in vaccines – the mercury and aluminium – are highly toxic to the gut lining and to our immune cells. These heavy metals not only make our bodies need to make more biofilm, but they destroy good gut bacteria and good gut viruses and can turn them into nasty disease forming bugs.

We have 24,000 genes which will last our lifetime. We have between 1000-2500 different types of bacteria, viruses, candida, fungal ‘bugs’ living in our bodies all the time (making up trillions of cells – this is our microbiome) – Bugs have a short shelf life – and as THEY replicate, THEY are learning how to live in OUR bodies. If we’re stressed – they’re learning to live in a stressful environment. If we’re toxic – they’re learning how to live in a toxic environment.

Don’t disregard your bugs! We have 10 x the number of bacteria in the gut to the number of cells in our body. 10X !!! And we have 100 x more viruses than that. We need our bugs. We need to look after our bugs. Love your bugs!

Kinesiology and Microcurrent helps your body to activate biofilm so that the immune system can recognise it and start dealing with it.

There are herbs, supplements and essential oils which help to break down biofilm and release old infections (so that we can deal with them) – favourite supplements at New Leaf are Bactrex, Parex, NasoClear, Herbal Throat Spray and N-acetyl cysteine.

Boost the immune system, tone the organs that have been damaged (lungs, gut, brain, throat, intestines), deal with the infections as they are released from deep inside and improve the way the body copes with stress.

Chi Nei Tsang and Reflexologycan support the body in breaking down biofilm and boosting the immunity.

We can help. Biofilm is linked to all chronic disease – not to mention kids health.

Ew!! Let’s talk yucky mucus! This is a fungal ball – the result of anti-bitoics which allow fungus to grow, and then the body releases mucus to sop up the fungus. Yuck!

Research is showing that biofilm (a mucus substance that is released to ‘sop up’ bacterial, fungal and viral particles) in the average person – with a normal history of vaccines and anti-biotic use, is holding up to 20 chronic infections in our bodies. Why?

Anti-biotic use: one dose of anti-biotics can destroy our gut lining, and our bacterial, viral and fungal combination in our gut for up to 7 years IF we haven’t done anything to repair the dose. Because anti-biotics upset our gut lining, our body makes biofilm to help to soothe it, often containing the bug-particles that we’ve been killing off. Anti-biotics are anti-bacterial – but they may allow candida, fungus, viruses or cancer cells to get out of hand…

Pain killers – yep! Any medical pain killers are anti-inflammatory by nature (makes sense!) but did you know that the process of killing bad bacteria or viruses or fungus or candida or cancer cells is indeed inflammatory? In other words, the more pain killers we take, the more chronic infections we can have lurking in our systems. If you take pain-killers you must be on probiotics to balance your body

Vaccines – the ‘adjuvants’ in vaccines – the mercury and aluminium – are highly toxic to the gut lining and to our immune cells. These heavy metals not only make our bodies need to make more biofilm, but they destroy good gut bacteria and good gut viruses and can turn them into nasty disease forming bugs.

We have 24,000 genes which will last our lifetime. We have between 1000-2500 different types of bacteria, viruses, candida, fungal ‘bugs’ living in our bodies all the time (making up trillions of cells – this is our microbiome) – Bugs have a short shelf life – and as THEY replicate, THEY are learning how to live in OUR bodies. If we’re stressed – they’re learning to live in a stressful environment. If we’re toxic – they’re learning how to live in a toxic environment.

Kinesiology and Microcurrent helps your body to activate biofilm so that the immune system can recognise it and start dealing with it.

There are herbs, supplements and essential oils which help to break down biofilm and release old infections (so that we can deal with them) – favourite supplements at New Leaf are Bactrex, Parex, NasoClear, Herbal Throat Spray and N-acetyl cysteine.

Boost the immune system, tone the organs that have been damaged (lungs, gut, brain, throat, intestines), deal with the infections as they are released from deep inside and improve the way the body copes with stress.

Chi Nei Tsang and Reflexologycan support the body in breaking down biofilm and boosting the immunity.

We can help. Biofilm is linked to all chronic disease – not to mention kids health.

What may all of these conditions have in common? Chronic Fatigue, Depression, Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Chronic Pain Conditions are all linked to:

Old infections that haven’t been fully resolved. The ‘particles’ and ‘byproducts’ of these old infections, staph or strep, e-coli, glandular fever EBV etc etc, live in the tissues in the body and do not show up in regular blood tests. It is estimated by some researchers that up to 80% of infections live in the biofilm, hidden deep inside the tissues in the body, and create a low-grade inflammation that is hard to shift medically. Depression is an inflammatory process – we simply can’t have depression without brain inflammation – there’s such a huge gut-brain connection that current research is looking at infections crossing the blood-brain barrier and being one of the many causes of depression. Herbal tonics, nutritionals, chi nei tsang abdominal massage and kinesiology all help the body to break down the biofilm, recognise the infections, and start eliminating these toxins.

Poor nutritional status: recommended daily allowances of nutrients are ridiculously low (and totally useless) when we have a chronic health condition – of any sort. Studies done in the 1970’s with Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia showed (40 years ago) that all nutritional needs were higher once we’re stressed, in pain, not sleeping, working too hard, bed-ridden. So a multi-vitamin or thinking we’re going to get the nutrition from our foods was disproven decades ago.

When we’re unwell, our body goes into ‘crisis mode’. That is, it starts running survival patterns which override normal day to day activities – digestion, blood pressure, lung activity, muscular function – this is why a cold or flu, or small car accident, or death in the family – can trigger a weird group of symptoms that often aren’t put together as being linked to the initial incident or episode. We start to put together these parts of your history, so that the medical conditions that have occurred finally make sense.

We specialise in supporting people with chronic health conditions – nutritionally giving the cells what they need, structural balancing to take the pressure of the body, survival pattern kinesiology to allow the body to start healing… and much more. Our Foundations of Health programme, particularly (which takes 9-18 months), is designed to work through cleansing the major filters of the body – the gut & digestion, the liver, the kidneys and immune systems – which slowly but surely allows all of the individual cells of the body to have better nutritional status, improves detoxification and improves health.

We treat a lot of Chronic Fatigue at New Leaf. Everyone know that it’s generally considered adrenal exhaustion, but there’s so much more to it than that. But we find that in order to get to the bottom of chronic fatigue there needs to be a multi-pronged approach! Here are just some of the things we need to work through with clients…

1. Finding hidden infections. 80% of infections are hidden in ‘biofilm’ in the body – viral, fungal and bacterial particles (bits of these bugs that have broken apart by vaccines, anti-biotics, anti-inflammatories, our natural immunity). These ‘particles’ are just as inflammatory as the ‘whole bug’. The body then releases mucus/plaque to ‘bind’ these particles to protect us from them. It takes 1000 x the dose of anti-biotics to break down this biofilm to release these infections, so that doctors can kill them. Herbs seems to be more effective – we use a combination of kinesiology, herbal and nutritional supplements to break down this biofilm (which can be anywhere in the body – bowels, nasal passages, lungs etc) to release the infections and boost immunity naturally.

2. Finding nutritional deficiencies AND the reasons for them. Our experiences practitioners have several techniques (questionnaires, symptoms, live blood, urine tests, kinesiology) to find out how the body is coping with nutrition, what the absorption is like, where extra nutrition is required, if there are toxins (heavy metals, plastics such as BPA’s, stress hormones, medications, anesthetics, pesticides, fertilizers etc) that are blocking the absorption of nutrients or making our need for certain nutrients much higher.

3. Detox Organs – Are they working? Our body’s detox organs are working harder than they ever have before in the history of mankind. Our pH (acid/alkaline balance) is struggling to stay healthy, our digestive organs, liver, immune system and kidneys – all struggle to keep up with the toxins we breathe in (such as pollution); eat (pesticides, sugars, caffeine, fructose, alcohol); create in our own body (stress hormones, infections)… We can help getting these organs back to their optimal health.

4. Work through any related organs and symptoms – ANYTHING can be linked to chronic fatigue!

Need another opinion? Need to find a health care clinic which can provide a health care solution that can consistently improve your health over the next weeks, months and years!

Great question from a client today… ‘What can I do if I get a urinary tract infection, anything naturally? Can we avoid anti-biotics?’ Gabby, our intuitive energy healer also asked me the same question about 6 years ago, having been seeing me for many years. Interesting for me, this client has been seeing me on and off for 5 years (at a guess) and here’s the answer. Yes. We can treat anything naturally.

Urinary Tract Infections can be chronic, frustrating and stressful. They can affects our relationships, our sex life, our fertility. We can do urine tests to find out how active/nasty they are and live blood screenings to find out how much work we need to do to get your urinary tract health and happy again!

For example, there are great urinary tract herbs such as bearberry, buchu, crataeva and nettles, all of which help to take the pain and itch out of the urinary tract. We would combine them with immune boosting herbs such as golden seal, andrographis, Echinacea.

Vitamin C is a naturopathic must! We need to flood the urinary tract with vitamin C – a minimum of 280mg per hour so that the excess goes straight to the urinary tract (kidneys and bladder), boosts the immunity, destroys the bacterial or viral particles that are attached to the bladder wall, and effectively stops the biofilm from building up and allowing old viral and bacterial particles to live in it, and wait until our defences are down and then they cause another infection.

NCD zeolite (fully-cleansed): also pulls viral and bacterial particles out of the body so our body doesn’t create ‘biofilm’ for the particles to live in, thereby creating a chronic low level infection that doesn’t show up in blood tests but causes problems.

There are many other things we can do: Chi Nei Tsang Abdominal Massage; Boost the immune system with kinesiology; other herbs, other supplements & nutrients.

Have you spent years trying to find solutions to health problems that seem elusive? There are more and more answers these days with chronic illness. We use a combination of therapies to help to return your body into balance – it takes time, but imagine having your life back!! Core reasons for chronic ill-health are:

latent infections (almost always involved)

adrenal fatigue

nervous system exhaustion

long term medication use

toxic overload

mitochondrial distress

fight and flight responses

inability for your body to release infections hidden in biofilm

genetic weaknesses for detoxification

Sick of these health issues? Struggling to get your health under control? Here are some core consultations we would recommend at New Leaf to find some of the causes – and treatments we find are necessary to start reversing these issues. Here’s are processes we use and how they work! Our initial prices for consultation are nearly always discounted – find out how we can save you money be being on a payment plan as well!

Initial consultation and live blood screening with our naturopaths: history taking, blood work, gut, liver, immune function… important to have an extended initial visit so that we can start collecting as much information as we can about you. Ask for a longer first session (1.5 hours) so that we can be more effective in helping you!

1.5 hour initial N.O.T. Neural Organisational Technique session. N.O.T. works on the nervous system balancing structure, immunity and the hormonal system. Norm is exceptionally skilled at N.O.T. – a gentle process developed by chiropractors and kinesiologists which deals with the most important nervous system issues first.

1 hour initial Immune/Infection kinesiology session with Madonna or Norm. We’ve developed immune protocols, which allow your body to start to recognise and deal with hidden latent infections. On average there are around 3-8 chronic hidden infections – sometimes more, (unable to be found in normal blood tests) for chronic disease. Medically it’s estimated that there are around 80% of infections hidden in your body in biofilm. Only 20% of infections can be found with the combination of blood and urine tests, faeces and sputum. That’s a lot of blood tests coming back ‘clear’ – with people being told there’s nothing wrong with them!

1.5 hour initial intuitive energy healing/counselling kinesiology with Gabby. Gabby is skilled at finding old patterns of energy/stress which are linked to current health problems, and helping you find solutions in moving forward. It’s like a counselling session combined with an energy treatment…

Chi Nei Tsang Abdominal Massage: Our massage therapists are skilled in Chi Nei Tsang – what we love about this process is that the major organs in your body improve with this treatment – having better blood and nerve supply, lymphatic detox processes… the liver and gall bladder, the spleen and pancreas, the intestines, the reproductive organs, kidneys and adrenals can all improve!

Infrared saunas: we an on-site infrared sauna to help detoxify your body!

There are so many symptoms that indicate chronic infections that we look at – things that doctors don’t pay attention to, symptoms that aren’t considered important and get ignored.

Obviously when we do a case-history for a new client we get lots and lots of information about the medical and emotional history. It’s amazing what naturopaths find vitally important for helping people move forward with their health. Some of the strongest indicators of chronic infection are its manifestations within the body – our symptoms – the powerful stimulus of chronic infection typically results in a combination of inflammation, immune suppression and mitochondrial dysfunction, along with many symptoms that make us feel unwell.